MLA format

useful link
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/

useful citation link
http://www.openc.k12.or.us/citeintro/citeintro.php?Grd=Sec

A synthesis essay: Wal-Mart

             On  May 22nd, 2006, a massive super store firm, Wal-Mart, withdrew from South Korea. Before Wal-Mart, another massive super store firm, Carrefour, also removed from South Korea. However, both firms are successfully operating in other countries, and they are very big global brand:

If there's no Wal-Mart store near you, just wait. If you shop at Wal-Mart, expect your store to get bigger or a new store to open even closer. The chain plans to expand from 3,400 U.S. locations today? half of them in the South? to a nationwide network approaching 5,000 stores in five years.

Carrefour S.A. is an international hypermarket chain headquartered in Courcouronnes, France. It is one of the largest hypermarket chains in the world (with 1,395 hypermarkets at the end of 2009, the second largest retail group in the world in terms of revenue and third largest in profit after Wal-Mart and Tesco.)


But in Korea, these superstores were replaced with a firm called “E-Mart.” E-Mart has similar operation system with Wal-Mart, which pursues a low price orientation to dominate the discount retail sector. Then, what are the reasons of their failure in Korea? Another dubious question comes out on mind: Can Wal-Mart get any bigger? Unfortunately, yes.

             Before stating the reasons of failure, we should know the characteristics of Wal-Mart in the United States, which were successful. The tactic that Wal-Mart used to expand in the United States was building a huge, warehouse look store in rural area, and then, spread out its store to nearby cities to form retail clusters. So, Wal-Mart used same tactic in Korea, making huge stores in suburbanized area. The places, Wal-Mart chose to make stores, did not matched with Korean consumers’ life style and shopping habits. Korean consumers prefer to purchase small amounts frequently than buying large volume at once, because they want fresh food and beverages than dry goods:

Wal-Mart and Carrefour, which entered the country in 1996, put off South Korean consumers by sticking to Western marketing strategies that concentrated on dry goods, from electronics to clothing, while their local rivals focused on food and beverages, the segment that specialists say attracts South Koreans to hypermarkets.

So, Korean consumers prefer to go to a department store, where it has good accessibility. This means that people like to go to department stores which have convenient transportation system. And urbanized areas have good transportation system. Wal-Mart did not concern shopping custom of Korea. 

             Not only the tactic but also bad timing made Wal-Mart to choose bad locations in Korea. Major other retailers, E-Mart and Homeplus, had already built their stores in urban area. It blocked Wal-Mart to build their stores in commercial area. This situation is also seen in Germany, where Wal-Mart failed to succeed either. In Germany, Aldi chain occupied favorable places for department stores; eventually, Wal-Mart could earn undesirable places:

Germany also provides a lesson in the perils of buying existing chains. Wal-Mart’s purchase of Wertkauf and Interspar saddled it with stores in undesirable locations. The Wiesbaden outlet is worlds away from a squeaky-clean American Wal-Mart: nearby are a couple of sex shops. “These were some of the least attractive of the big-box retailers out there,” said James Bacos, director of the retail and consumer goods practice at Mercer Management Consulting in Munich.

Bad timing was problem for Wal-Mart in Korea and Germany; but, we could also know that Wal-Mart was only interested in expansion without having enough information on each market.  

             Wal-Mart failed in Korea, because it did not concerned about differences on each countries’ cultures. The vice chairman of Wal-Mart said, “As we continue to focus our efforts where we can have the greatest impact on our growth strategy, it became increasingly clear that in South Korea’s current environment it would be difficult for us to reach the scale we desired.”

When we see the cases on Korea and Germany, it seems that Wal-Mart can’t expand anymore. Actually, it can. Wal-Mart can expand their industry in China, Mexico and Brazil, which have big market:

Wal-Mart did not change the names of the stores, which range from neighborhood grocers to large American-style hypermarkets. But with 295 stores in Brazil, Wal-Mart now ranks third in the market, after 
Carrefour of France and the market leader, Companhia Brasileira de Distribução.

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Also, Wal-Mart does not care much about its foreign stores carry the name derived from its founder. For example, in Japan, Wal-Mart took over Seiyu, but keep using name Seiyu, instead of using Wal-Mart. Over all, Wal-Mart is still expanding outside the United States:

Seventy percent of Wal-Mart’s international sales come from outlets with names like Asda in Britain, Seiyu in Japan or Bompreço in Brazil.

2nd draft, ode to my love

Dear My Love (that doesn’t exist)

You have big eyes, a white skin, a glamorous body, and a pretty face. This is a description of an ideal beautiful woman. Is this too ideal, or is this too explicit? Well, most of men have similar standards about beautiful women. Not only men but also you were the one who wants to be an ideal woman. You wanted to have big eyes, a white skin, a glamorous body, and a pretty face. After some processes (surgery), you changed. And I agree that you are pretty and beautiful than before; but, I don’t feel affection to you anymore. Beauty is not an ultimate goal for your life, don’t change your face but show your other values. I can’t tell your values; but, I can tell you that you have to find your own other values. And I KNOW that there must be values that differentiate with other people. 

You are beautiful; but, you were cute, kind and appealing. You were natural and you were wonderful to me as you were. I loved the way you were. But, your outlook changed so much in a bad sense, and the change on outlook changed your inner values. You were the one who was kind, faithful and sincere. You were the one who alluring and attractive than other one else to me. But, you aren’t. You aren’t appealing to me as before. You abandoned your other inner values, but you are full of desire, envy and madness. I can’t understand the reason why you changed yourself. Be confidence with yourself.  

      What are the reasons that made you change? It would be weird to say this but, an answer for this question would be “me.” I as a member of the Korean society, it is my fault. I helped to make lookism in our society. I preferred beautiful women than the women who have good heart; and I preferred pretty look women than the women who have natural look. Many men had these thoughts; and it helped to make lookism that gives stress to women in Korea. This stress made you change. I am really sorry that I was one factor that made you change.     

Be proud of yourself, and don’t get stress by your outlook. Beauty is not everything; there are other important values for human kinds than beauty. But, it will be hard to find inner values. You should look yourself to find the inner values. And, for men, we should not estimate females with appearances. We will be mad if we were estimated with our appearances. People have to work to find other people’s inner values than outer values.

                                                      

From

                                                                         Do Hyun Lee

walmart

http://reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart/
This domain gives various resources that claim about the bad sides of the walmart. Because I am interested in social welfare, I choose an article that is about health care that is basic welfare that an active country should provide for the citizens.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/21/us-walmart-idUSTRE79K43Z20111021
This article is about ridiculous system that is made by the walmart institution. According to this article, the walmart will increase health care cost for tobacco producers. Not only this brutality but also, the walmart will not provide health care insurance for new part time workers. These behaviors are clearly suppressing the rights of the workers.

ode

Dear My Love (that doesn’t exist)

           You have big eyes, white skin, glamorous body, and pretty face. This is a description of an ideal woman who I think as a beautiful woman. Is this too ideal? Well, most of the men have similar standard about beauty. Not only men but also you were the one who wants to be ideal woman. You wanted to have big eyes, white skin, glamorous body, and pretty face. I agree that you are pretty and beautiful, but I don’t feel affection to you. Beauty is not an ultimate goal for your life, don’t change your face but show your other values. I can’t tell your values, but I can tell you that you have to find your own other values.  

           You, before the beauty, were cute, kind and appealing. You were natural and you were ideal to me as you were. I loved the way you were. But, you changed so much in a bad sense. You were the one who was kind, faithful and sincere. You were the one who alluring and attractive than other one else to me. But, I can’t understand the reason why you changed yourself.  

           What is the reason that made you change yourself? It would be weird to say this but, the answer for this question would be “me.” I as a member of the Korea society, it is my fault. I helped to make lookism in our society. I preferred beautiful women than the women who have good heart, and preferred pretty look women than the women who have natural look. This thought helped to make lookism that give stress to women in Korea. This stress made you change yourself.  I am really sorry that I made you change.           

          

           Be proud of yourself, and don’t get stress by your outlook. Beauty isn’t everything; there are other important values for human kinds than beauty.

                                                      

From

                                                                          Do Hyun Lee

                                                                          as a representative of Korea society 

photo shop

Well, this is just a homework for art that is making our own album cover.
I know that you are not looking for an essay about this picture.
I just post my work here just for a show up that I am good at photo shop
Thank you.

P.S. 그대를 그린다-HLIN is really a good music

Reading Journal

The Body

           Reminiscence. It is the word that popped in my head, when I read this novella, The Body. This story is generally about character Gordie, reminding his young experiences. He had true friends: Vern, Teddy and Chris, who can really care and shared the feelings together. And, they suddenly planned a travel to find the corpse.

           I felt sympathy in this part. When, I was young, I thought Yamakasi, corpse, military, guns and things that look cool and powerful are really amazing. And, I tried to follow those things or watch videos about those categories. Those things were really fantastic to me, but the travel with my friends was the thing that I really hoped. Also, I dreamed to have a tree house that can be used as a secret place with my friends, but not for the place to play pokers and smoke. Well, traveling and tree house could not achieve in real world. So, when I was looking at the scene of tree house and planning immediately to go to find corpse, I thought about my past when I thought same like the characters in the movie. And, I thought about the imagination I had, when I really wanted to have a tree house, the secret place.

           Also, I had to admit that when I was young age, I admire to be look strong so make up the words that are meaningless. For example, I stole things in the market, I saw a monster, I had a fight with 6 people who are older than me, spitting swear and some kind of bluff. These kinds of features are well-demonstrated in this film. Like, Teddy, Vern always says swear and making bluffs.

           Vern, Teddy and Chris are the characters that match with my friends when I was in elementary school. Not only my friends but those kids’ characteristics are easily seen in other people’s friends, common features in our elementary friend.  There is a friend who has a problem with his parents, a friend who is coward and a friend who is good at talk. As I make new friends as I grow up, there were not friends who fit easily to me, meaning my elementary friends are the best friends I had ever had. And, this thought corresponds with the thought of this book’s author, or Gordie. Although, I and my friends could not contact, because of my position, I really miss them so much. 

And, when we are age 12 or 13, we feel independence against parents, and we are more familiar with our friends. When I was that age, I spent most of time with my friends, that I absented the academy and played game with my friends. And I and my friends planned to go to trip together to the valley, although it was closed with my house. Making the memories were the value that I promoted when I was young.

Running is a thing that I did with my friends. Students, age 12, have prides about running fast. I and my friends had always competed to run faster. So, we had race every day. This type of image is in the book, “The Body.”

This story really matches with my experience when I was young. So, when I read this book, I could rethink about the memories that I made with my friends. I could memorize the feelings that I had at that era. I believe they will do well in their high schools, and want to meet them later in future.